Follow the money.
You’re always two steps away
from finding the truth.

The scar, sharp and straight 

All the gay bars, of course, know their abandoned
patrons. Especially at Thanksgiving.  

The pool tables at the Black Cat
in Silverlake, covered in white plastic
and food for miles. More than anything
I’d seen at Aunt Pauline’s all-you-can-eat
spread. They had three turkeys,
two with stuffing: one with oysters, and
one corn bread midwestern. Another
with water chestnuts, snow peas, and kimchee.
Also some crazed tofu thing
someone sculpted to verisimilitude.

Several versions of beans, greens, potatoes
based loosely on where they were from but
also made more flavorful by additions
of what they learned by leaving.
And for sure that made them all the better:
Anup’s samosas, Kevins pervert pinwheels,
Ariel’s bbq baked beans, Jesus’ frijoles of doom,
Sandro even made a desert called Death
in the Afternoon which was a bloody red flan
with raspberry coulis and Rioja jelly balls.    

An entire smorgasbord of we’ve got you
and you’ll be just fine right here.  

And we were. Stuffed with food. Lubricated
with lemonade vodkas and Irish coffees.  

So that when we left and walked west
along Santa Monica Boulevard into the placid setting
sun, through a world that so inviting
and so much our own place, we did not think
of old home Missouri or starving. And we did not think,
in the long term, about where we were going.
We inhaled as if human, comfortably,
for the first time ever, ambling in the rough
direction of home.

oops. missed my haiku

yesterday. but i’m not mad.

it was a great day.

They linger in two-day stubble of conversation, washing sorrow.  

I can’t run to you,

you died on a humid sunny day 

my crying is medicinal in nature;

I’m afraid,

I remember how you danced with me when it rained,

now I’m confused about the pain, 

it’s antithetic but I can’t abstain

I’m sad in the sunshine and energetic in the rain

your memory is a strain, like I just can’t let it be mundane

By way of estrangement arrangement

I’ve saved $1,500.00 on Father’s Day gifts.

It’s worth every penny,

graced with Abe Lincoln’s

shiny copper head.

Father Abraham had many sons

and many sons had

a $9 coffee on the way to work.

I pull to the window

and drop some change in a jar

I sip my drink through a straw

like I’ve almost forgotten

to feel bad about the turtles

after all this time.

You could smell the cold
through the closed door–
outside daythick and steamheat–
all stillness and need outside.

Two daddy long-legs succor
the cool, moist air from the door jamb
of my apartment,
their prehistoric bodies
also found in Scottish rock
from over four hundred million years ago,
and right here, too,
the alien wires of their many legs
and heads like spent erasers–

I resist my urge to crumple
their delicate frames away, avert
my eyes at the ghost
the negative of their erect bodies make–

alone, I open that door,
heft the weight of my body
into my apartment’s cool envelope,
into its usual places.

*dedicated to LEX18 and WKYT’S social media pages

It never made sense,

We are a commonwealth 
built on the belief that we
are all part of the common
good; that we are all equal
none more important than 
the rest; I only wish that it 
could truly be that way, not
just in Kentucky, but in our
country; all of us counting 
instead of just the ones who
place themselves in power 
that the common good was
not, really, quite uncommon